Jean-Yves Masson: The Angel (From French)

The Angel
By Jean-Yves Masson
Translated by A.Z. Foreman
Click to hear me recite the original French

The angel said “Now to the terrace where the wind 
turns, come. Draw nearer to my mystery.
I am the moment reuniting all the dead.
You must struggle against me. No greatness is given
him who would keep his word if he does not throw
down a shadow gauntlet to time that binds him by its law.”
Approaching angel, I know you as the sea,
As the gravity of temples and the youth of doves.
I shall stand against you. I shall be strong.
And how small my defeat if I come to
the future garden hands filled with burgeoning fruits.

The Original:

L'Ange Disait

L'ange disait :"Sur la terrasse où le vent tourne,
viens maintenant, approche-toi de mon mystère,
je suis l'instant qui réunit tous les morts.
Tu devras lutter contre moi. Nulle grandeur
n'est donnée à qui veut tenir parole, s'il ne lance
un défi d'ombre au temps qui le tient sous sa loi. "
Ange qui viens, je te connais comme la mer,
comme la gravité des temples et la jeunesse des colombes,
je me dresserai contre toi. Je serai fort.
Et peu m'importe ma défaite si je viens
au jardin d'avenir, les bras chargés de fruits naissants.

Ronsard: "When you are old" (From French)

Sonnet to Helen
By Pierre de Ronsard (mid 16th cent)
Translated by A.Z. Foreman

When you sit aging under evening's star
By hearth and candle, spinning yarns and wool,
You'll sing my verse in awe and say "Ronsard
Wrought song of me when I was beautiful"

Hearing such words, your serving-maid that night,
Though half-asleep from drudging, all the same
Will wake at my name's sound and stand upright
Hailing the deathless praises of your name.

I'll be a boneless phantom resting sound
Amid the myrtly shades¹ far underground.
You, by the hearth, a crone bent low in sorrow
For your proud scorn that willed my love away.
Live now, I beg of you. Wait not the morrow.
Gather the roses of your life today.

Note
¹-Resting with the shady myrtle tree often denotes peace, and its greenness suggests immortality. That myrtle leaves were an emblem of Venus also implies that Ronsard has that goddess on his side in his poetic headspace. Note, however, that this is not the only classical connotation of myrtle. See for example Virgil (Aeneid VI 440-4):

Not far from here, splayed all about, there lie
The Plains of Weeping. That is the name they bear
For here those whom brutal love has drained and ravaged
Hide on clandestine paths and under cover
Of myrtle bowers. Even here in death
Their yearnings have no mercy.

Nec procul hinc partem fusi monstrantur in omnem
Lugentes campi; sic illos nomine dicunt.
hic quos durus amor crudeli tabe peredit
secreti celant calles et myrtea circum
silva tegit; curae non ipsa in morte relinquunt.

Recording of me reciting the original in a reconstruction of late Renaissance French literary pronunciation



The Original:

Sonnet à Hélène

Quand vous serez bien vieille, au soir à la chandelle,
Assise aupres du feu, devidant et filant,
Direz, chantant mes vers, en vous esmerveillant:
« Ronsard me celebroit du temps que j'estois belle ! »

Lors vous n'aurez servante oyant telle nouvelle,
Desja sous le labeur à demy sommeillant,
Qui au bruit de mon nom ne s'aille resveillant,
Benissant¹ vostre nom de louange immortelle.

Je seroy sous la terre, et fantaume sans os ;
Par les ombres Myrtheux je prendray mon repos.
Vous serez au fouyer une vieille accroupie,
Regrettant mon amour, et vostre fier desdain.
Vivez, si m'en croyez², n'attendez à demain :
Cueillez dés aujourd'huy les roses de la vie.

Notes on the French text:
¹- Benir qqn. de qqch. in Middle French meant "congratulate/commend" (someone for something), which makes more sense contextually here than the more commonly presumed "bless with."
²- si m'en croyez in Middle French meant something more like "I implore you."

Rexa Zoelfman: Waking (From Laisaluga)

Here's a sonnet I have loved for years, translated from a language whose poets so rarely employ the sonnet form, unfortunately. 

Waking

By Rexa Zoelfman

Translated by A.Z. Foreman

Click to hear me recite the original in Laisaluga

Hearing a sound that ought to be your sleep

I reach and set my heart on your left hand

But find the window: winter, ankle-deep

In autumn, hates the pathways of the land.

But snow is slowly stepping down the tree

Where morning tried to speak, but mused in rain.

I lie back, wondering if you also see

What dreams we are begetting in my brain:

Years roll along our faces and we cling

To bedsheets and each other. In cold light

Snow melts between our bodies. Everything

We do shall stake our claim to all the night.

I turn against your ceiling with our cry

As if to look for kinship with the sky.

The Original:

Meréxo

Rexa Zoelfman

Xomé takai talonti vitrok sün

Momú kai latri mik kor vitrok sin

Ma trewu qo ferfatai: Herazün

Pedlunge xi qibranai doro xin.

Ma nolge newu peto dendriné

Txa motro paulet pürka txü plük fal.

El rebaskú kai pregu hek vit vé

Mai rezui est txü nitrok tetmonal.

Hai hokorú figaiper kai txelú

En nitrakón, en loqfarín, en pai.

Ex lumper kaxnu newu. Heimarú

Ie vitrok maka tolu honter lai.

Vitrok metonper kansu kailaséq

Kehapesú kedrán xo kuxmonéq.

Paul Van Ostaijen: Mythos (From Dutch)

Mythos
By Paul Van Ostaijen
Translated by A.Z. Foreman
Click to hear me recite the Dutch

A tall hand juts in the night
And it juts before the night
for the night alone is yonder blueness
at the endpoint of my eyes
and before the blue night there slides the dive of one white dove
If a white hare should slide before your eyes
Over the street, beware
It takes your life on over
From the one scale to the other
And you do not know
What this all signifies.

The Original:

Mythos
Paul Van Ostaijen

Een hoge hand steekt in de nacht
en zij steekt vóór de nacht
omdat de nacht alleen is gene blauwheid
aan 't einde van mijn ogen
en vóór de blauwe nacht schuift éen witte duif
zo een witte haas schuift voor uw ogen
over de straat neem u in acht
hij draagt uw leven over
van d'ene schaal naar d'andere
en gij weet niet
wat dit beduidt

Mihai Eminescu: For The Star (From Romanian)

“Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars - mere globs of gas atoms. I too can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more? The vastness of the heavens stretches my imagination - stuck on this carousel my little eye can catch one - million - year - old light. A vast pattern - of which I am a part... What is the pattern, or the meaning, or the why? It does not do harm to the mystery to know a little about it. For far more marvelous is the truth than any artists of the past imagined it. Why do the poets of the present not speak of it? What men are poets who can speak of Jupiter if he were a man, but if he is an immense spinning sphere of methane and ammonia must be silent?” 
― Richard P. Feynman

Well, Richard Feynman, meet Mihai Eminescu who meditates on love in terms of some light that has travelled for thousands of years at a speed of 186,000 miles per second from a distant star to the Earth.  You two will get along well. Science, no less than religion, can make for good poetry.

For the Star
By Mihai Eminescu
Translated by A.Z. Foreman
Click to hear me recite the original Romanian

It's been a long way for that star
Now rising in our skies:
Its light has trekked a thousand years
To reach our earthborn eyes.

It may have long ago burned out
Amid the blue of space
Yet only now its ray has come
To set our sights ablaze.

That icon of a perished star
Climbs heaven's canopy:
We who saw not the light that was
Now see what's ceased to be.

It's ever thus when our desires
Go, spent, into the night.
Our love still follows after us
With an extinguished light.

The Original:

La Steaua

La steaua care-a răsărit
E-o cale-atât de lungă,
Că mii de ani i-au trebuit
Luminii să ne-ajungă.

Poate de mult s-a stins în drum
În depărtări albastre,
Iar raza ei abia acum
Luci vederii noastre,

Icoana stelei ce-a murit
Încet pe cer se suie:
Era pe când nu s-a zărit,
Azi o vedem, şi nu e.

Tot astfel când al nostru dor
Pieri în noapte-adâncă,
Lumina stinsului amor
Ne urmăreşte încă.